Dannenfelser Op-ed: Tale of Two Women Leaders

SBA List President Marjorie Dannenfelser is up with a new op-ed piece at The Daily Caller. Marjorie compares two women, Rep. Rennee Ellmers (R-NC) and Carly Fiorina, a possible 2016 presidential candidate, and how they represented the pro-life position in the public square this week.

It isn’t often that The Washington Post describes a defender of abortion as having the “worst week in Washington.” But that is what Post columnist Chris Cillizza did in picking Rep. Renee Ellmers for the honor, thanks to her strange timing in opposing a popular late-term abortion limit while hundreds of thousands of pro-life marchers were in town last week. By contrast, a different female leader had the best week in politics: Carly Fiorina.

Fiorina is the former CEO of the computer giant Hewlett-Packard. For months she has been alluding to the possibility of joining the Republican presidential fray. Doing so would make her the only woman seeking the GOP nomination in a cycle where the Democratic nominee is very likely to be Hillary Clinton. Fiorina is no neophyte to public life, and her run for the U.S Senate against Barbara Boxer in 2010 – while not victorious – showed her as a serious campaigner able to raise money and to draw votes from unexpected corridors, including Hispanics.

Renee Ellmers, on the other hand, is a North Carolina Congresswoman elected in 2010 with the help of the Tar Heel state’s increasingly numerous and effective pro-life forces. My organization, the Susan B. Anthony List, was her first PAC endorsement. Ellmers’ opposition to Obamacare and staunch statements on abortion (she has said the only exception she would support is to save the life of the mother) were among the keys to her surprise victory and subsequent re-election.

In 2013 Ellmers spoke on the House floor in favor of the Pain Capable Unborn Child Protection Act, a mark of enthusiastic leadership. Flanked by more than a dozen other female House members, Ellmers joined a historic majority of 228 members to pass a bill marking the first successful House vote to protect directly the lives of unborn children whose rights had been snuffed out by Roe v. Wade.

Ever since that House vote, the national debate on abortion has shifted. The Democratic Party’s campaign to make pro-life all about contraception and a spurious “war on women” more than met its match: pro-life women leaders championing a bill that addresses the pain and sorrow that are the reality of abortion. After a record number of pro-life victories on Election Day 2014, it became clear that abortion-centered feminism is dead.